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Description of the OSO spin-stabilized spacecraft capable of conducting eleven experiments in studying the sun, the earth, and other space objects. The OSO provides controlled electric power, thermal control, a telemetry and command interface, tape-recorded data storage, and precisely timed orbital and orientation information. A chart indicating experiments carried out on nine OSO missions is included.
Test results on charge coupled device (CCD) imaging arrays (100 x 160 pixel and 400 x 400 pixel) employed as imaging detectors are reported, along with expected low light level (LLL) performance. Reasons for selection of a thinned backside-illuminated buried-channel three-phase CCD variant are indicated. The LLL performance and long storage time capability of the CCD imaging array recommend it for stellar photometry, detection and tracking of faint objects, and other astronomical applications.
Constellation program was NASA's long-term program for space exploration. The goal of the commodities studies was to solicit industry expertise in production, storage, and transportation required for future use and to improve efficiency and life cycle cost over legacy methods. Objectives were to consolidate KSC, CCAFS and other requirements; extract available industry expertise; identify commercial opportunities; and establish synergy with State of Florida partnerships. Study results are reviewed.
This innovation provides the user with autonomous on-screen monitoring, embedded computations, and tabulated output for two new processes. The software was originally written for the Continuous Lunar Water Separation Process (CLWSP), but was found to be general enough to be applicable to the Lunar Greenhouse Amplifier (LGA) as well, with minor alterations. The resultant program should have general applicability to many laboratory processes (see figure). The objective for these programs was to create a software application that would provide both autonomous monitoring and data storage, along with manual manipulation. The software also allows operators the ability to input experimental changes and comments in real time without modifying the code itself. Common process elements, such as thermocouples, pressure transducers, and relative humidity sensors, are easily incorporated into the program in various configurations, along with specialized devices such as photodiode sensors. The goal of the CLWSP research project is to design, build, and test a new method to continuously separate, capture, and quantify water from a gas stream. The application is any In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) process that desires to extract or produce water from lunar or planetary regolith. The present work is aimed at circumventing current problems and ultimately producing a system capable of continuous operation at moderate temperatures that can be scaled over a large capacity range depending on the ISRU process. The goal of the LGA research project is to design, build, and test a new type of greenhouse that could be used on the moon or Mars. The LGA uses super greenhouse gases (SGGs) to absorb long-wavelength radiation, thus creating a highly efficient greenhouse at a future lunar or Mars outpost. Silica-based glass, although highly efficient at trapping heat, is heavy, fragile, and not suitable for space greenhouse applications. Plastics are much lighter and resilient, but are not efficient for absorbing longwavelength infrared radiation and therefore will lose more heat to the environment compared to glass. The LGA unit uses a transparent polymer antechamber that surrounds part of the greenhouse and encases the SGGs, thereby minimizing infrared losses through the plastic windows. With ambient temperatures at the lunar poles at 50 C, the LGA should provide a substantial enhancement to currently conceived lunar greenhouses. Positive results obtained from this project could lead to a future large-scale system capable of running autonomously on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The software for both applications needs to run the entire units and all subprocesses; however, throughout testing, many variables and parameters need to be changed as more is learned about the system operation. The software provides the versatility to permit the software operation to change as the user requirements evolve.
Exascale computing, big data, and cloud computing are driving the evolution of large-scale information systems toward a model of data-proximal analysis. In response, we are developing a concept of climate analytics as a service (CAaaS) that represents a convergence of data analytics and archive management. With this approach, high-performance compute-storage implemented as an analytic system is part of a dynamic archive comprising both static and computationally realized objects. It is a system whose capabilities are framed as behaviors over a static data collection, but where queries cause results to be created, not found and retrieved. Those results can be the product of a complex analysis, but, importantly, they also can be tailored responses to the simplest of requests. NASA's MERRA Analytic Service and associated Climate Data Services API provide a real-world example of climate analytics delivered as a service in this way. Our experiences reveal several advantages to this approach, not the least of which is orders-of-magnitude time reduction in the data assembly task common to many scientific workflows.
Conceptual design of low-boom supersonic aircraft is heavily dictated by aircraft volume and lift distributions. These unique design characteristics make it a challenge to enforce mission requirements (such as static margins and trim requirements) during design optimization. This low-boom design challenge is resolved by using reversed equivalent area targets for low-fidelity low-boom inverse design and a block coordinate optimization (BCO) method for multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO). The corresponding low-boom MDO problem includes aircraft mission constraints on ranges, cruise speeds, trim for low-boom cruise, static margins for takeoff/cruise/landing, takeoff/landing field lengths, approach velocity, and tail rotation angles for trim at takeoff/landing, as well as fuselage volume constraints for passengers and main gear storage. The BCO method is developed to optimally resolve the conflicts between the low-boom inverse design objective and other design constraints. This method is successfully applied to design a low-boom supersonic configuration that carries 40 passengers, flies a low-boom mission with cruise Mach of 1.6 and range of 2,500 nm, and cruises overwater at Mach 1.8 with range of 3,600 nm. The generated configuration satisfies all specified mission constraints and has the potential to match a reversed equivalent area target with ground noise level below 70 PLdB.
Since the start of LHC in 2008, the ATLAS experiment has relied on ROOT to provide storage technology for all its processed event data. Internally, ROOT files are organized around TTree structures that are capable of storing complex C++ objects. The capabilities of TTrees developed over the years and are now offering support for advanced concepts like polymorphism, schema evolution and user defined collections and ATLAS makes use of these features to handle its EDM. But some original TTrees concepts, like the POSIX file model and sequential writing, remain unchanged since the beginning and could be an obstacle to achieving the performance required for High Luminosity LHC. With the HL-LHC performance goals in mind, the ROOT project developed a new storage format - the RNTuple. RNTuple, with its accompanying user API, is now in the final development stage and is planned to be production-ready at the end of 2024. Soon after that, the TTree will become a legacy format. ATLAS intends to have its main Event processing framework Athena ready to use RNTuple in the production environment as early as possible. The work on adopting RNTuple as another ROOT storage technology in Athena started already in 2021 and is now nearly complete. Although the initial goal was to focus on derived-AOD products (PHYS and PHYSLITE), with a little added effort all ATLAS data products: RDO, HITS, ESD, AOD and DAOD can be now stored in RNTuple format and transparently read back. In this paper we will describe the current state of RNTuple adoption in the Athena framework and explain the ATLAS EDM requirements that had to be met on the ROOT side to successfully integrate both environments. We will demonstrate the ability to run standard ATLAS production workflows, based on RNTuple as the Event data storage technology, and point out key advantages of the new format.
Nuclear safeguards inspectors expend significant time and maintain intense focus in reviewing video surveillance for safeguards relevant events. To increase efficiency and reduce the time burden of safeguards inspectors performing surveillance data review, this paper presents a novel deep learning (DL) systems concept to integrate generalized DL models into the safeguards surveillance review workflow. The Agency is investigating several DL algorithms for object recognition, localization, tracking, and flagging relevant activities. The project team is working closely with nuclear safeguards inspectors to identify review use cases (based on specific safeguards objectives) and collect their associated requirements. We focused on CANDU and LWR Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) and their associated dry storage areas as these present a particularly heavy burden on the inspector surveillance review process due to the number of these facilities under safeguards worldwide. Initial DL algorithm results on safeguards data are promising. Using a convolutional neural network, the team attained a mean average precision (mAP) of 92.9% identifying and localizing spent fuel (SF) casks from a 475 surveillance image dataset. Further, the team had initial success in training a recurrent neural network to identify reactor area activities in video clips, successfully indicating when SF casks enter or exit a pool. We discuss how such DL algorithms would be integrated into the Next Generation Surveillance Review (NGSR) software application. Another issue impacting review productivity is the long time inspectors may have to wait when running these algorithms in NGSR. We present a concept to pre-process remotely collected surveillance data with DL models as the data arrives to IAEA headquarters so that results are already available when starting a new review in NGSR. The proposed DL system concept shows a pathway and workflow for increasing an inspector’s surveillance review productivity by quickly and accurately identifying declared and undeclared safeguards relevant objects and activities in large quantities of surveillance imagery data.
Ceph is a widely used distributed object store, but its messenger layer imposes substantial CPU overhead on the host. To address this limitation, we propose DoCeph, a DPU-offloaded storage architecture for Ceph that disaggregates the system by offloading the communication-intensive messaging component to the DPU while retaining the storage backend on the host. The DPU efficiently manages communication, using lightweight RPC for metadata operations and DMA for data transfer. Moreover, DoCeph introduces a pipelining technique that overlaps data transmission with buffer preparation, mitigating hardware-imposed transfer size limitations. We implemented DoCeph on a Ceph cluster with NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPUs. Evaluation results indicate that DoCeph cuts host CPU usage by up to 92% while sustaining stable throughput and providing larger performance benefits for object writes over 1 MB.
Battery storage is “technology that enables power system operators and utilities to store energy for later use. A battery energy storage system (BESS) is an electrochemical device that charges (or collects energy) from the grid or a power plant and then discharges that energy at a later time to provide electricity or other grid services when needed”. As countries in Asia consider the inclusion of BESS in their power systems to meet policy objectives, renewable energy goals, increase resilience, and expand energy access, there is an opportunity to learn from the experiences of other regions and jurisdictions that have developed more advanced storage markets and deployment methodologies. This report presents global best practices of codes, standards, and interconnection procedures developed to support the safe and reliable deployment of BESS. Several relevant case studies highlight current efforts to ensure safe operation of BESS and showcase potential pathways for adoption of relevant codes and standards. Specifically, this report is intended to support the Thailand Office of Energy Regulatory Commission (OERC) and other stakeholders in their efforts to develop technical codes and standards to govern the installation and operation of BESS; it may also be utilized as a guide for other countries as interest in the deployment of BESS technologies continues to grow.
A NASA team is developing a test article for the purpose of demonstrating the long duration storage of liquid hydrogen utilizing passive Cryogenic Fluid Management and cryocoolers via a two-stage active cooling approach. Funded by NASA’s Technology Demonstration Mission Program and managed by the Cryogenic Fluid Management Portfolio Project, the team is leveraging demonstrations conducted under pervious NASA activities to develop a fully integrated test article that will demonstrate the zero boil-off storage of liquid hydrogen. This paper discusses the previous activities being leveraged from NASA’s Cryogenic Propellant Storage and Transfer project, the test article design and build, hardware and instrumentation selections, control methodology, and the planned primary and secondary test objectives. The test article assembly and demonstration are both to be conducted in the East Test Area at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and are currently scheduled for Fiscal Year 2024.
Due to the rising global energy demand and enhanced awareness of the environmental impact of fossil fuels, the Gulf of Mexico, traditionally known for oil extraction, offers a distinct chance to repurpose the existing offshore infrastructure. With the depletion of oil reserves, it is feasible to adapt previously utilized floating platforms for extraction to generate renewable energy, specifically through wind-generated power and hydrogen production. This adaptation seeks to promote a transport system that is more ecologically friendly in the future. Offshore wind turbines serve as the main energy source, with help from battery storage and hydrogen production to enhance the overall system performance, hydrogen creation, fuel, and electricity delivery for sustainable energy production. The system is divided into two distinct cases, each evaluated for cost, performance, and feasibility, with a focus on minimizing both the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) and the Levelized Cost of Hydrogen (LCOH). The first case examines the integration of offshore wind turbines with hydrogen production. Excess electricity generated by wind turbines is directed toward hydrogen production via electrolysis. The hydrogen produced can be used as fuel for vehicles or transported to the shore via pipelines. The second case investigates a technology that combines wind turbines with battery storage. The batteries possess an ability to supply electricity for a continuous duration of 4 hours maximum each day. The main objective is to reduce the LCOE by considering the battery's charging and discharging cycles, together with the uncertain attributes of wind power and battery deterioration. The produced energy can be distributed for onshore applications or utilized for the purpose of offsetting offshore loads such as subsea oil and gas production, transportation, etc. The offshore hydrogen-battery hybrid system is improved via three advanced algorithms, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), and Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO). In Case 1, PSO improves hydrogen production by efficiently managing the electrolyzer’s power consumption, decreasing production costs significantly. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is applied to improve the efficiency of the electrolyzer, reducing production costs and achieving an optimized CAPEX of $240.00 million (from an initial $300.00 million) and OPEX of $9.60 million per year. This system produces 4,720,000 kg of hydrogen annually, with a Levelized Cost of Hydrogen (LCOH) of $6.40/kg and an annual profit of $9.27 million. In Case 2, GWO effectively reduces the overall energy cost by improving the charge-discharge management of batteries, which extends battery life and optimizes their use. The second case focuses on integrating battery storage, optimized using the Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO), which enhances battery charge-discharge cycles, extending battery life and lowering costs. This system achieves an optimized CAPEX of $204.80 million (from an initial $256.00 million) and OPEX of $9.29 million per year, producing 310883.39 MWh of electricity annually at a Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) of $86.13/MWh, with an annual profit of $6.25 million. The implementation of a comprehensive strategy results in a substantial reduction in costs, improved energy efficiency, and a dependable supply of both electric power and hydrogen, emphasizing the benefits of converting offshore oil platforms for clean energy transition. This study explores a clean strategy to enable cost-effective repurposing of offshore O&G platforms. Both cases highlight the economic and technical feasibility of transitioning offshore oil platforms to clean energy systems, demonstrating substantial cost reductions and reliable energy and hydrogen supplies for sustainable energy production.
Under the sponsorship of the NASA Safety Training Center at the Johnson Space Center, a hypergolic propellant safety course has been developed. This is a 2-day course on guidelines for hypergolic propellant system design, materials selection, operations, storage, and transportation. Recognizing that numerous fuels and oxidizers can be hypergolic, this course is specific to the hydrazine family of fuels and nitrogen tetroxide and its variants. The objectives of the course are to enable the student to identify and evaluate the hazards of hypergolic propellants, and to understand the methods for controlling those hazards and responding to emergencies. The course covers properties and hazards of the hydrazines and oxidizers; design and operations in hypergolic facilities; materials selection for use in hypergol systems; storage vessels, piping, and component considerations; hypergol detection; fire fighting practices; operating and transportation principles and procedures; and emergency practices and considerations. A hazards analysis methodology is presented. Numerous references are provided and the applicability of certain regulatory documents is discussed. A brief overview of other propellants, including hydrogen peroxide, is given at the end of the course.
The Hermiston, Oregon Basalt CarbonSAFE Phase II project (HERO CarbonSAFE) seeks to accelerate the deployment of commercial carbon dioxide (CO2) storage projects in basaltic rocks. Basalt CO2 storage has several advantages to conventional saline storage reservoirs including 1. The potential for rapid mineralization of CO2, 2. Associated decreases in pressure and CO2 migration risks, 3. Reduced long-term monitoring requirements with respect to plume tracking, 4. Widespread geographic distribution and, 5. Large storage potential due to thickness, porosity, and CO2 interactions with basalt. And for locations such as the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii, Iceland, India and Japan, basalts may offer the only economically feasible option for local CO2 storage. However, there are limited field-scale assessments of CO2 storage in basalt, and current carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) permitting and regulatory frameworks were developed for conventional saline reservoirs. HERO CarbonSAFE is designed to address research gaps and uncertainties associated with basalt storage. Specifically, the project will assess the feasibility of CO2 injection in the deep layered basalts, long-term storage (mineralization), practical approaches for large-scale implementation (50+ million metric tons of CO2 over 30 years), lithology-specific risks, and the technoeconomic potential for CO2 storage in basalts. The HERO CarbonSAFE project will assess feasibility of developing a commercial-scale (50+ million metric tons of CO2) geological storage complex within the Columbia River Basalt Group (CRBG), a layered continental flood basalt complex that underlies Calpine’s natural gas-fired Hermiston Power Project (HPP) in Hermiston, OR (Figure 1). Under this 2-year CarbonSAFE Phase II project, the HERO team will conduct a data acquisition campaign that includes drilling a stratigraphic well to a total depth of ~1,500 m into the thick layered basalts proximal to HPP. A comprehensive well logging and hydrologic testing program will be augmented with new core collected from flow zones and sealing units, and comprehensive laboratory testing to help refine the kinetic rates of mineralization. The newly acquired information will be integrated with existing data from regional wells to correlate basalt injection zone properties to develop storage hub/commercial-scale models. Using these models, the project team will evaluate injection scenarios to define the technical and economic potential for storing a minimum of 50 million metric tons of CO2 over a 30-year period, along with a robust sensitivity analysis on key parameters governing reservoir viability for sustainable injection over a commercial project lifetime. Specific technical objectives of HERO are: (1) assessing the reservoir response of a series of stacked layered reservoir flowtop sequences occurring in this area of the CRBG to commercial-scale injection volumes; (2) extending prior efforts by the project team to characterize the deep layered basalts encountered in regional studies, to leverage prior investments by U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Carbon Storage program; (3) leveraging DOE’s mineralization characterization efforts to advance model parametrization for commercial scale injection of CO2 in basalts; (4) conducting risk assessments associated with scaling up to commercial storage hub injection goals, while validating DOE’s National Risk Assessment Partnership (NRAP) tools, to identify potential constraints that would prevent the CRBG from serving as a commercial-scale storage complex; (5) developing mitigation plans to address identified risks; (6) developing a commercial-scale injection and monitoring, verification and accounting (MVA) strategy; (7) utilizing computational models to define and minimize, if possible, the Area of Review (AoR) under Class VI regulations; and (8) developing a robust CO2 management strategy for CRBG that also considers a regional source/sink approach that is responsive to stakeholder needs and industrial demand. Specific institutional objectives are: (1) identifying and developing plans to mitigate the nontechnical challenges associated with the build-out of a commercial-scale storage complex within the CRBG with integrated CO2 sources; (2) implementing the community outreach plan; (3) conducting regulatory research, including a survey of issues related to pore space ownership, MVA and long-term assurance of mineralization-based storage, to support an eventual application for a UIC Class VI permit; (4) advancing the project’s plan for CO2 liability management; and (5) continuing to refine and update the project’s economic model. The final objective is the preparation of a comprehensive Site Characterization Plan that draws upon the technical and institutional feasibility assessments to prepare the project for future commercialization efforts.
This document details the execution of Cooperative Agreement DE-EE0008849, “demonstration of electrolyzer operation at a nuclear plant to allow for dynamic participation in an organized electricity market and in-house hydrogen supply” during the performance period of 10/1/2019 – 9/30/2024. The project was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). Constellation Energy Generation, LLC (formerly Exelon Generation Company, LLC) is the prime recipient of the award. Other members of the project team are INL, NREL, ANL and Nel Hydrogen. The main project objective was to demonstrate an end-to-end integrated grid-scale carbon-free H 2 production, storage and utilization pilot plant at a nuclear generating facility. The project also aimed to evaluate market opportunities and regulatory requirements related to the participation of integrated hydrogen production and nuclear plant facilities in organized power markets, by demonstrating dynamic control and operation of the electrolyzer and assessing the economics of dynamic participation combined with the revenue streams from hydrogen production. On March 7th , 2023 Constellation started hydrogen production at it’s Nine Mile Point Nuclear Plant in Oswego, New York. The PEM electrolyzer operating at Nine Mile Point uses 1.25 megawatt of nuclear electricity to produce 560 kilograms of clean hydrogen per day, more than enough to meet the plant’s operational hydrogen use. It will also help set the stage for possible large-scale deployments at other clean energy centers in Constellation’s fleet that would couple clean hydrogen production with storage and other on-site uses. Employing the lessons learned from the 1.25 MW demonstration-scale, nuclear-powered clean hydrogen production facility at Nine Mile Point, Constellation was a major participant in the MachH2 hydrogen hub recently selected for up to $\$$1 billion by the Department of Energy (DOE) as part of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Constellation will use a portion of the hub funding to build the world’s largest nuclear-powered clean hydrogen production facility at its LaSalle Clean Energy Center in Illinois. The project was featured in a number of news articles and press releases and received 2 awards. At the 2023 DOE HFTO’s Annual Merit Review meeting, the P.I. Dr. Uuganbayar Otgonbaatar and project manager Robert Beaumont were recognized for “outstanding achievements in the development and demonstration of a first-of-a-kind clean hydrogen production facility, powered by carbon-free nuclear energy, at the Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station in Oswego, New York.” The project was also awarded 2023 Nuclear Energy Institute’s Top Innovative Practice award.
A thermally insulative inflatable garment designed specifically as a lightweight low storage volume emergency suit for subzero weather survival is reported. Testing confirms that the inflatable suit design satisfies the objectives for a subject standing at rest with environmental temperatures down to -450 F if the garment is inflated with Freon.
Peculiarities of the radar information about clouds are examined in comparison with visual data. An objective radar classification is presented and the relation of it to the meteorological classification is shown. The advisability of storage and summarization of the primary radar data for regime purposes is substantiated.
The current research and technology (R and T) base program is first described, then special attention is directed toward outlining a new system technology specifically oriented toward providing the utility power plant technology base for semi-permanent earth orbital facilities expected to be needed in the middle to late 1980's. The R and T program involves five areas of research: (1) photovoltaic energy conversion; (2) chemical energy conversion and storage; (3) thermal-to-electric conversion; (4) environment interactions; and (5) power systems management and distribution. The general objectives and planned direction of efforts in each of these areas is summarized.